So yesterday I experienced an amazing real-world UX case of how bad UX is costing a smallish business a fortune in time, money, labour, and happiness.

I normally rate these rodeos 4/5, but knowing it’s a 60-year-old lady on the bull, she deserves more than five out of five.

So it’s Monday morning.

My phone rings.
Truecaller says: Spam → Caller name: Dr GSV Rudy.

I ignore it.

The phone rings again.
Still spam.
Ignore.

Third time. I answer.

An already annoyed lady asks if she can speak to “M. Gerstein.”

I immediately go defensive.

“I’m W. Kirstein.”

“Do you know him?”

So I say it’s not me and I don’t know him → then I hang up.

But something about the call felt legit — especially because she sounded Afrikaans, and my wife had broken her arm recently — so I phone back.

A very irritated receptionist answers and you know she’s already had a long day before 9AM.

I explain that I’m both “M” and “W” Gerstein, since it’s probably my handwriting.

She immediately confirms.

Turns out she’s calling about one of my wife’s ER bills from when she broke her arm about two months ago. Apparently, the medical aid or gap cover still hadn’t paid.

I tell her I never received anything.

She confirms my email address in a very condescending way. Because clearly, this woman does not make mistakes.

Then it clicks when she says:

“I’ll resend it… It opens with your cellphone number.”

And hangs up.

Now pause there for a second.

Stay paused a bit longer and reflect… because that one tiny UX decision is costing them a fortune — and slowly killing this lady’s happiness.

When I receive the email, I realise I had seen it before.

I just couldn’t open the attachment because I tried my ID number.

The instruction about using my cellphone number was probably buried somewhere in the email… but we’re all on autopilot these days. And honestly, who reads bills to the end… if at all?

And suddenly this entire experience becomes a UX problem.

Think about what failed here:

• The sender appeared as spam.
• The naming mismatch created distrust.
• The mental model for opening the document didn’t match user expectations.
• The payment process between provider and medical aid already created frustration before human interaction even started.
• The receptionist inherited the emotional fallout from a system designed by someone who decided 20 years ago to use a cellphone number instead of an ID number.

What’s interesting is that fixing just one UX issue might solve half the chain reaction.

If the document simply opened with the identifier people naturally expect — like an ID number — maybe:

• the bill gets opened immediately,
• the claim gets processed faster,
• fewer follow-up calls happen,
• fewer people mark the number as spam,
• and the receptionist doesn’t start every call already irritated.

That’s the thing about UX.

People think it’s about screens.

Most of the time, it’s actually about emotional debt created by systems that don’t align with human behaviour.

Years ago in the early 2000s Apple changed my view on design and introduced me to design thinking. With a borrowed idea.

Japanese kitchen appliances had been using magnetic cords for years. The thinking was simple — if someone trips over the cord, it releases. No pull, no spill, no mess.

Apple had the same problem on their hands. Broken ports, damaged laptops.

Engineering kept reinforcing the hardware. But the hardware wasn’t failing — people were just tripping over cables. That’s not a design flaw… It’s just Tuesday.

So they applied a kitchen fix to a computer. A connector that releases the moment it’s pulled. MagSafe launched in 2006 and people loved it immediately — not because it was clever, but because it just made sense.

That’s the thing about good design. It doesn’t always come from reinventing anything. Sometimes it’s just paying attention to what’s actually happening and being open enough to find the answer somewhere completely unexpected.

A deep fryer solved a laptop problem.

Nobody saw that coming.

Building the wrong thing.

For the product owner — wasted sprints, missed market, team credibility gone. For the investor — burned runway, no traction, no exit.

Same fear. Different seats. Same bill.

And here’s what most investors don’t realise they’re funding when design is an afterthought — they’re funding assumptions. Unvalidated. Unchallenged. Baked into code before a single real user ever saw the thing.

That’s not a product risk. That’s a portfolio risk.

The best design process does one thing investors should care deeply about — it makes assumptions visible and killable before they become expensive.

A prototype costs days. A pivot costs months. A wrong product costs the round.

When you’re doing due diligence, don’t just look at the roadmap. Look at how they validate. Look at when design enters the process. Look at whether anyone has actually watched a real user try to use this thing.

Because a team that designs before it builds isn’t just more creative.

They’re less likely to burn your money.

Design isn’t the pretty layer on top. It’s the risk management your term sheet forgot to ask about.

Mind that gap.